A full tour of the original IBM Personal Computer, model 5150 "Revision A" from 1981, showing the hardware and software, and some games that can run on it.
I kept this one specifically because of its collector's value -- I originally got it for free about 15 years ago from a company that was moving to a new building and wanted to get rid of all their old computer equipment, and I was able to sell it this year on eBay for over $150. I also have a newer IBM PC from 1986 with a hard drive and CGA color graphics and I use it for playing old PC games.
Concerning the 544Kbs of RAM: I had a 5150 back in the late 1980s, and ran into this problem - specifically, DOS did detect my 640Kbs, but the BIOS had not initialized more than 544, so I got parity errors when programs passed the limit. I fixed it with a small program I wrote and ran during boot, which simply wrote zeroes to the remaining 96Kbs WITHOUT trying to read it, and thus presumably resetting the chip parity bits... The simple solutions we had back then... :-)
The Revision A PC has become a collector's item since IBM only made it from 1981 to early 1982, but even the later version can fetch quite a good price if you have a complete, working system. And the IBM monitors and keyboards are often worth more than the PC itself alone!
I bought a 256k back in the day ~ very exciting indeed ~ a whole new universe opening up. The cost was equivalent US$7,924 (just checked my old files) including software and a 17" colour monitor... and that was the price outside the USA. Those horrid 5.25" floppy disks in thick paper envelopes were nasty.
I have a very weird, but happy memory of slightly later IBM desktops, IBM was once the second largest employer in my hometown, and I knew many employees as I grew up. I also happened to do Raptor rehab and educational programs. I had a friend who was an engineer at IBM, as well as a photographer on the side. We were both hired to shoot a series of promotional photos using IBM computers and a couple of very tame, and patient owls I had at the time. He had a monitor shell with a false screen, which had a light source inside, and we built a set with a large tree limb with the unit set up on it. The Great Horned Owl was set in front of the computer and photographed as if he were using the computer perched in a forest. Gorgeous photos! Also used a little Screech Owl for a shoot. I have no idea what ever happened to the photos, or what the project ended up as It was supposed to be an ad campaign if I'm not mistaken. This was in the early to mid 90's.👍
Back when processors were a thousandth of the processing power we have now and RAM was only a few kilobytes while now, we're well into the gigabytes and pushing towards terabytes! We've come a long way!
I found an IBM XT in a garbage dumpster in 1992. I didn't know anything about computers at the time. My uncle put DOS on it for me and I used it to learn DOS commands.
The 5160 was the PC-XT. It used the same 83-key keyboard as the 5150 PC. What you're probably referring to is either the 101-key Model M keyboard or the 84-key Model F keyboard.
The original IBM PC was so much more capable than the Apple II it competed against. Faster processor (8088 was far superior to 6502 chip), more memory (Apple II started with 4K, could be upgraded to 64k, IBM started with 16k and was upgradeable to 256k), and the fact DOS was licensed software all heightened its opportunity for the future. Likewise, the IBM XT in 1983 was far more capable than Apple's IIe product from 1983, and that common trend never really ended. The IBM-PC standard was always superior. It is easy to see why IBM & compatibles became the standard PC. Great to look back at history!
I only have one PC now (the one with the hard drive and CGA card). I sold this one. As far as I know, all 5150 PCs shipped with full-height floppy drives. The half-height drive in yours was probably a later replacement. IBM used half-height drives in the later XTs (beginning 1985) and the XT-286.
Great video. I've never seen a revision A 5150 before. I've had several 5150's and 5160's but they were all upgraded to 640K and could boot a hard drive if installed correctly. Thanks for sharing.
I take it you have at least 2 5150's, in other videos you've made you've shown a 5150 with a hard disk and 3.5 inch floppy drive, so I'm guessing that's another computer, also your other 5150 had a CGA card in it if I remember correctly. You're such a great presenter, you did a great job with this video.
Adding on to vwestlife's answer, the firmware inside the IBM PC runs a test on memory when power is switched on. By writing to the RAM chips and reading the values back, the firmware can determine the location of bad chips by examining where the values read and written differ.
I'm picking up an ibm 5150 on Thursday after searching for over 3 years for one that works and is in my price range. Looking at the photos, it too does not have the ibm logo on the second drive, so that seems to be normal :o) Wow, text mode pacman!! :o)
I just found one after looking a year. After church I was killing time before work, downloaded letgo, a minute later saw one with a 5150, 5153, and model f for 50 dollars!!!!!!! Called in sick and drove 50 miles to pick it up. 256k + 256k expansion, dual floppy, 20mb hardcard (dead drive though), and a math co-processor. The expansion had some bad memory, and don't have any software, but I can copy my own disks by the way.
Hi vwestlife, I was given two Ibm 5170 pc's in very good to excellent condition along with a suntouch model k84 keyboard which looks just like the Ibm keyboard and a Goldstar monitor. I know nothing of these old pc's or even how to even access any thing on the pc. I think it has basic on it because of the same screen you showed with all the commands at the bottom. I am going to open them up and take a look in side and see what came with them. I will let you know what I see. By the way, Great channel you have!!
Back in the day, I use to service these and run system preps. One time a customer purchased a hard card, which was a hard drive that is designed ot get installed via the ISA slot. It didn't work. It turned out, as you said, that he had a 5150 that did not suport it.
I have the first (or close to it.) revision as well. 256k and EGA! I have the cable to use a cassette with it as well. The fan is starting to get noisy though.
Interesting differences between this one and mine - my one is also a revision A 16-64KB board, but the floppy drive doesn't have the IBM logo on it, and it's the later 130W PSU fitted too... very random... I was given mine for free, what with it having been in storage for 25+ years, and have the 5151 green monitor too which still works, but sadly no original keyboard as the company think they threw it out! The machine originally ran when I saw it, but the PSU cap blew but this has since been replaced along with all other motherboard caps so it's back to working order or booting at least now. Very lost as far as finding any of the old floppy discs unfortunately, and at present the floppy controller card also needs fixed as neither drive picks up (DIP switches are set correctly etc), nor does the 256KB RAM expansion card, so still a bit of a way to go on the restoration!
Some of the early floppy drives did not have the IBM logo on them. It's also possible that it originally had single-sided drive(s) and then was later upgraded with double-sided drive(s).
I found one of these Revision A's in the trash a few years ago in mint condition, all original with the monitor, wires, keyboard, everything. I loved playing Wheel of Fortune, and I think it also had Family Feud on it. I ended up chucking it out though, as it was so damn big and I needed room for my modern desktop instead. Are they worth anything, or are they just good for nostalgia only?
I'm going crazy trying to find a demo program, I think it may have come with the 5155 (at least I remember seeing it on one of those), it had Flight of the Bumblebees, as well as some kind of psychedelic visuals.
You are thinking of a demo program which came with the Compaq Portable. It originally worked with ms-basic 2.11, but it crashes in the later gw-basic 3.x. I've yet to rediscover a usable Compaq MS-DOS 2.11 boot diskette which includes the demo.
@@vwestlife thanks alot ! i really enjoy your videos..your love of retro computers and game systems is as great as mine they are my number 1 hobby!great job!
Can a RTC module from a XT work on this? So you don't have to manually enter the time. They only have years from 83-99. Will keep the correct time though.
My uncle gave me his old custom pc with a 386 motherboard. Do you want it? I don't think I'll have time to play around with it. I don't have any other social media accounts to reach out.
I think it's funny that IBM chose to show off the graphics and sound capabilities of a system that was notoriously awful at both. If I were a C64 owner and I saw these demos, I'd laugh my ass off.
Didn't the XT have a 63 Watt power supply? I never had a 5150, but I did have an XT with a Hercules graphics card and I could have sworn it was 63 watts. Also, the 8088 and the 8086 were REALLY slow, even for their time. It's funny too that IBM create the standard that nearly bankrupted them. I don't think they even make any PCs at all anymore. They sold the WONDERFUL Thinkpad to a cheap Chinese company who then ruined the TP brand.
The IBM 5160 XT came with a 130-watt power supply, while the 5150 PC came with a 63.5-watt power supply. And Lenovo's ThinkPads are still pretty good. It's their cheap non-ThinkPad laptops that suck.
vwestlife Thanks. The TP was one of the best laptop brands ever. Most had great screens and they are easily field serviceable. I've wored in IT since the early 90s and Think Pads were light years ahead of their time. Speaking of which, I have a T20 (IIRC, it's away at the moment, it's a 700MHZ P3 IIRC) that powers on then right back off again. I had just replaced the MB so I don't think it's a power supply problem, plus it does charge the battery. Any ideas?
With the money they spend on cooling, most of them could buy a much faster chip. Chips that are easy to OC are worth overclocking, but they are few and far between.
Thanks just a ghost guess I get from viddy RUclips but if you run this with or sometimes where your ps2 56 you might notice that CPU 64bit numeric u.k 'inherentence' being networked,as it were,between these machines, which you just got too recall the mind prism logs rhythms punish crime Orwellian gamblers noose no news yet when you outlandishly vocalise such complete terms of copyrighting alike sixteen bit ,yeah?
Why would you smash something as awesome as the IBM PC 5150? That's just stupid. There is a use for them, you can use old SW that doesn't run properly on new computers... or you can sell them. People like you make these PCs hard to find and expensive for collectors. If I don't need something, I usually donate or sell it. I think it's better to donate working stuff instead of smashing it. That's only my opinion.. if you don't agree, I don't care.
You have to wonder how IBM managed to design such a bad computer. In particular, the 20 bit address bus, 16b internal data bus and the 8 bit external data bus Add in the worst memory mapping scheme and you have a computer that only IBM could get away with making and become the defacto standard for 33 years and counting! Of course, the good thing is the long term compatibility.along with open standards. IBM tried to kill the clone with the AT based on MCA, but ISA and EISA were so dominant that having micro channel was actually a setback!
It's a limited design because IBM had to cheapen the design to make it price-competitive with 8-bit computers like the Apple II, TRS-80, and all the CP/M machines that were popular at the time. And of course they probably didn't think the design would last so long -- a maximum of 640 KB of RAM was more than anyone would ever need in 1981, but of course by a decade later, things had changed!
vwestlife I am pretty sure they deliberately used a 20 bit address line and the awful hard/soft segmenting system and put the BIOS and Video ram at the top of memory so that it wouldn't become a defacto standard and was meant as a short term solution until a "real PC" could be developed by them.. It's possible that if it weren't for LIM EMS, we would be using much different PCs today. Thanks!
christo930 It is well known that IBM didn't want the PC series to compete with their mainframe systems. And in 1981 when most personal computers had 64K or less, it seemed that no one would ever need the full 1 MB of address space -- especially since actually having that much RAM at the time would've cost thousands of dollars!
vwestlife I think it's a real shame the Amiga didn't catch on in the business world and that CBM didn't aggressively pursue big business. Amiga was so far ahead of it's time but I think the low res monitor and the early form factors (except maybe the 2000) are what kept it out of the business market. If you don't know, you would be surprised at how well an Amiga can stand up to even a Pentium machine (YEARS after the demise of CBM). I think if they would have introduced all Amiga models in the 2000 format, it might have stood a chance especially if they allowed clones. Of course,,Motorola wasn't able to keep the 0x0 going (stooped at the 060), but if they had Intel's volume and income, they might have been able to keep working around the architecture the way Intel and AMD have. BTW... I really like your channel.
I kept this one specifically because of its collector's value -- I originally got it for free about 15 years ago from a company that was moving to a new building and wanted to get rid of all their old computer equipment, and I was able to sell it this year on eBay for over $150. I also have a newer IBM PC from 1986 with a hard drive and CGA color graphics and I use it for playing old PC games.
It's worth a lot more than $150 now. 😏
Concerning the 544Kbs of RAM: I had a 5150 back in the late 1980s, and ran into this problem - specifically, DOS did detect my 640Kbs, but the BIOS had not initialized more than 544, so I got parity errors when programs passed the limit. I fixed it with a small program I wrote and ran during boot, which simply wrote zeroes to the remaining 96Kbs WITHOUT trying to read it, and thus presumably resetting the chip parity bits... The simple solutions we had back then... :-)
Knowing IBM they had a version of FunWriter called Writer, that came without the fun.
The Revision A PC has become a collector's item since IBM only made it from 1981 to early 1982, but even the later version can fetch quite a good price if you have a complete, working system. And the IBM monitors and keyboards are often worth more than the PC itself alone!
I bought a 256k back in the day ~ very exciting indeed ~ a whole new universe opening up.
The cost was equivalent US$7,924 (just checked my old files) including software and a 17" colour monitor... and that was the price outside the USA. Those horrid 5.25" floppy disks in thick paper envelopes were nasty.
I have a very weird, but happy memory of slightly later IBM desktops, IBM was once the second largest employer in my hometown, and I knew many employees as I grew up. I also happened to do Raptor rehab and educational programs. I had a friend who was an engineer at IBM, as well as a photographer on the side. We were both hired to shoot a series of promotional photos using IBM computers and a couple of very tame, and patient owls I had at the time. He had a monitor shell with a false screen, which had a light source inside, and we built a set with a large tree limb with the unit set up on it. The Great Horned Owl was set in front of the computer and photographed as if he were using the computer perched in a forest. Gorgeous photos! Also used a little Screech Owl for a shoot. I have no idea what ever happened to the photos, or what the project ended up as It was supposed to be an ad campaign if I'm not mistaken. This was in the early to mid 90's.👍
Back when processors were a thousandth of the processing power we have now and RAM was only a few kilobytes while now, we're well into the gigabytes and pushing towards terabytes! We've come a long way!
I found an IBM XT in a garbage dumpster in 1992. I didn't know anything about computers at the time. My uncle put DOS on it for me and I used it to learn DOS commands.
The original Tetris game was done in 1986. It was already a popular PC game before Atari/Tengen and then later Nintendo released it on the NES.
'Only' 544Kb of RAM? That's still way, _way_ better than most microcomputers of the day, including the impressive Commodore 64.
The 5160 was the PC-XT. It used the same 83-key keyboard as the 5150 PC. What you're probably referring to is either the 101-key Model M keyboard or the 84-key Model F keyboard.
Best historian on youtube :)
12:59 - very nice felt-tip-pen block caps there. A lot neater than mine would be, anyway.
The original IBM PC was so much more capable than the Apple II it competed against. Faster processor (8088 was far superior to 6502 chip), more memory (Apple II started with 4K, could be upgraded to 64k, IBM started with 16k and was upgradeable to 256k), and the fact DOS was licensed software all heightened its opportunity for the future. Likewise, the IBM XT in 1983 was far more capable than Apple's IIe product from 1983, and that common trend never really ended. The IBM-PC standard was always superior. It is easy to see why IBM & compatibles became the standard PC. Great to look back at history!
Amazing how far PCs have come.
I only have one PC now (the one with the hard drive and CGA card). I sold this one.
As far as I know, all 5150 PCs shipped with full-height floppy drives. The half-height drive in yours was probably a later replacement. IBM used half-height drives in the later XTs (beginning 1985) and the XT-286.
I got this one back in the mid-'90s from a company which was moving and they gave all their old, unwanted computer equipment to me.
Wow. A venerable piece of history.
With a graphics card and hard drive, it could run Windows 3.0.
Windows 3.1 requires a 286 or higher CPU.
In case you weren't aware, vintage (1970s/1980s) computers are collectible, and are increasing in value.
Great video. I've never seen a revision A 5150 before. I've had several 5150's and 5160's but they were all upgraded to 640K and could boot a hard drive if installed correctly.
Thanks for sharing.
I take it you have at least 2 5150's, in other videos you've made you've shown a 5150 with a hard disk and 3.5 inch floppy drive, so I'm guessing that's another computer, also your other 5150 had a CGA card in it if I remember correctly. You're such a great presenter, you did a great job with this video.
Adding on to vwestlife's answer, the firmware inside the IBM PC runs a test on memory when power is switched on. By writing to the RAM chips and reading the values back, the firmware can determine the location of bad chips by examining where the values read and written differ.
what a great time trip , thnx alot for this video
I'm picking up an ibm 5150 on Thursday after searching for over 3 years for one that works and is in my price range. Looking at the photos, it too does not have the ibm logo on the second drive, so that seems to be normal :o) Wow, text mode pacman!! :o)
I just found one after looking a year. After church I was killing time before work, downloaded letgo, a minute later saw one with a 5150, 5153, and model f for 50 dollars!!!!!!! Called in sick and drove 50 miles to pick it up.
256k + 256k expansion, dual floppy, 20mb hardcard (dead drive though), and a math co-processor. The expansion had some bad memory, and don't have any software, but I can copy my own disks by the way.
Yes, this is an older PC which I have since sold. I still have the newer PC with the hard drive and CGA card.
Great overview. Didn't know about these small differences in the early versions.
Hi vwestlife, I was given two Ibm 5170 pc's in very good to excellent condition along with a suntouch model k84 keyboard which looks just like the Ibm keyboard and a Goldstar monitor. I know nothing of these old pc's or even how to even access any thing on the pc. I think it has basic on it because of the same screen you showed with all the commands at the bottom. I am going to open them up and take a look in side and see what came with them. I will let you know what I see. By the way, Great channel you have!!
Back in the day, I use to service these and run system preps. One time a customer purchased a hard card, which was a hard drive that is designed ot get installed via the ISA slot. It didn't work. It turned out, as you said, that he had a 5150 that did not suport it.
Great video! If you don't mind me asking, where do you get most of your vintage computers? Ebay, or craiglist, or a marketplace on a gaming forum?
I have the first (or close to it.) revision as well. 256k and EGA! I have the cable to use a cassette with it as well. The fan is starting to get noisy though.
I haven't tried, but it should be possible.
That manual with the cartoon bird brings back memories.
No, I don't have an IBM XT, although I do have a Packard Bell "Turbo XT" clone.
The error code displayed on startup identified that chip as bad.
Great vid!
Very intereting. One question thought - how did you determine what mem chip was defective?
The Tandy 1000 is still there it's been there since that fastest pc video was published
In 1981 many of IBM's programmers had TRS-80's at home.
Interesting differences between this one and mine - my one is also a revision A 16-64KB board, but the floppy drive doesn't have the IBM logo on it, and it's the later 130W PSU fitted too... very random...
I was given mine for free, what with it having been in storage for 25+ years, and have the 5151 green monitor too which still works, but sadly no original keyboard as the company think they threw it out! The machine originally ran when I saw it, but the PSU cap blew but this has since been replaced along with all other motherboard caps so it's back to working order or booting at least now. Very lost as far as finding any of the old floppy discs unfortunately, and at present the floppy controller card also needs fixed as neither drive picks up (DIP switches are set correctly etc), nor does the 256KB RAM expansion card, so still a bit of a way to go on the restoration!
Some of the early floppy drives did not have the IBM logo on them. It's also possible that it originally had single-sided drive(s) and then was later upgraded with double-sided drive(s).
I found one of these Revision A's in the trash a few years ago in mint condition, all original with the monitor, wires, keyboard, everything. I loved playing Wheel of Fortune, and I think it also had Family Feud on it.
I ended up chucking it out though, as it was so damn big and I needed room for my modern desktop instead. Are they worth anything, or are they just good for nostalgia only?
A complete system would be worth a few hundred dollars. With the original boxes and manuals, $500+!
The first tune you played sounded like the theme song from the Alfred Hitchcock Hour
Yes, it was the model M. It was a Goodwill find.
I'm going crazy trying to find a demo program, I think it may have come with the 5155 (at least I remember seeing it on one of those), it had Flight of the Bumblebees, as well as some kind of psychedelic visuals.
You are thinking of a demo program which came with the Compaq Portable. It originally worked with ms-basic 2.11, but it crashes in the later gw-basic 3.x. I've yet to rediscover a usable Compaq MS-DOS 2.11 boot diskette which includes the demo.
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I don't think that's a clone of the Tetris we know, it appears that that one is earlier than before Tetris was discovered by Nintendo :o)
What kind of CPU and how much RAM?
it really is interesting! think about people, the more modern computers get, the more there are things to do in a computer. cool.
unicomp still makes genuine IBM clicky keyboards. only differences is that it is USB, and it says unicomp instead of IBM.
anyone know the music at 6:21? Sounds familiar.
i love that monitor!! it is very nice! i would love to find one...
It's a Mitsubishi Diamond Scan AUM-1381A. Similar in capabilities to the first NEC MultiSync monitor.
@@vwestlife thanks alot ! i really enjoy your videos..your love of retro computers and game systems is as great as mine they are my number 1 hobby!great job!
At 5:11 somewhere, how on earth did the internal square wave generator, output a sawtooth wave?
Because if you toggle it on and off fast enough, you can get the PC speaker to produce any kind of waveform you want.
Can a RTC module from a XT work on this? So you don't have to manually enter the time. They only have years from 83-99. Will keep the correct time though.
Maybe not. I missed the backplate portion.
My uncle gave me his old custom pc with a 386 motherboard. Do you want it? I don't think I'll have time to play around with it. I don't have any other social media accounts to reach out.
Oh ok... I didn't know that the IBM monitors are often worth more than the IBM PCs.
The insignia of that monitor looks a bit like Diamond Shamrock. Now called Valero.
How did you know which particular ram chip had to be replaced? Was it visibly damaged?
cool computer
@vwestlife Could you tell me anyhthing about my Grid Case 1520 Laptop please?
7:23 look like hangman face
The fan in the silver power supply is very loud.
I think it's funny that IBM chose to show off the graphics and sound capabilities of a system that was notoriously awful at both. If I were a C64 owner and I saw these demos, I'd laugh my ass off.
Except, the C64 didn't even exist yet when the IBM PC was introduced.
I'm pretty sure that's a good thing.
You sound l like Roger Chang from revision3???
Hey Bro, can i use your video for a presentation for school?
Clips of it, yes -- if properly cited -- but not the whole thing.
Thank you :)
I don't know.
7:15 XD
i have a mitsubishi radio :) has a 5 cassette changer it's insane
Well in 1981 if you saw this you would instantly shit your pants from technology overload.
Do you have an xt version of this system?
Didn't the XT have a 63 Watt power supply? I never had a 5150, but I did have an XT with a Hercules graphics card and I could have sworn it was 63 watts. Also, the 8088 and the 8086 were REALLY slow, even for their time. It's funny too that IBM create the standard that nearly bankrupted them. I don't think they even make any PCs at all anymore. They sold the WONDERFUL Thinkpad to a cheap Chinese company who then ruined the TP brand.
The IBM 5160 XT came with a 130-watt power supply, while the 5150 PC came with a 63.5-watt power supply. And Lenovo's ThinkPads are still pretty good. It's their cheap non-ThinkPad laptops that suck.
vwestlife Thanks. The TP was one of the best laptop brands ever. Most had great screens and they are easily field serviceable. I've wored in IT since the early 90s and Think Pads were light years ahead of their time. Speaking of which, I have a T20 (IIRC, it's away at the moment, it's a 700MHZ P3 IIRC) that powers on then right back off again. I had just replaced the MB so I don't think it's a power supply problem, plus it does charge the battery. Any ideas?
With the money they spend on cooling, most of them could buy a much faster chip. Chips that are easy to OC are worth overclocking, but they are few and far between.
christo930 that’s why you got the nec v20 or v30
now i can afford the computer, and have all the software made for it back. lol
Casemod for an up-to-date PC
5:11 Sawtooth wave!
Ah, the IBM PC with the most unfortunate model number ever.
I know, right?
How?
cool
interesting that PC is the same age as me LOL
I had this computer LOL
Lenovo=Think Center
IBM=Think center Lenovo+IBM FTW Well Specaily Lenovo
Thanks just a ghost guess I get from viddy RUclips but if you run this with or sometimes where your ps2 56 you might notice that CPU 64bit numeric u.k 'inherentence' being networked,as it were,between these machines, which you just got too recall the mind prism logs rhythms punish crime Orwellian gamblers noose no news yet when you outlandishly vocalise such complete terms of copyrighting alike sixteen bit ,yeah?
No.
I have that exact same computer only I have a different monitor and a floppy drive broke
where do you get all of these pcs?
+Corey Sheehan I found a 1988 Swan XT 10Mhz computer at a local PC store's recycling center. Try asking local repair shops.
geo58impala thanks. Never even thought of that. There's 3 local ones within walking distance I could check out.
Corey Sheehan what did you find?
Poke-Man so fun I never seen it before
Is it just me, or does he sound a little bit like Otacon from Metal Gear Solid?
I think I'm using a 5160(?) keyboard on my computer. I'm probably going to look like an idiot if a 5160 isn't a PS/2.
4:58 Booted from floppy disk
The same things people used them for when they were new. Duh.
7:14 lol
Knock offs of pac man and Tetris
Well,last run who began use ,had too study the clock too tell us the time? Which isn't these comments? Cycle whip wagons ho sixties again,wow?
14:58 Laggy screen
gaboalejo0612 It's not the screen, it's the CPU which only runs at 4.77 MHz.
I have one of these but it is rusty and unusable
DOS games
don't tell LGR!!
Too late -- he watches my videos.
Why would you smash something as awesome as the IBM PC 5150? That's just stupid.
There is a use for them, you can use old SW that doesn't run properly on new computers... or you can sell them.
People like you make these PCs hard to find and expensive for collectors. If I don't need something, I usually donate or sell it. I think it's better to donate working stuff instead of smashing it.
That's only my opinion.. if you don't agree, I don't care.
I thought Bill Cosby invented POKEMAN? Meh!!!
555 videos
wrong monitor
So?
first also i like this pc
You have to wonder how IBM managed to design such a bad computer. In particular, the 20 bit address bus, 16b internal data bus and the 8 bit external data bus Add in the worst memory mapping scheme and you have a computer that only IBM could get away with making and become the defacto standard for 33 years and counting! Of course, the good thing is the long term compatibility.along with open standards. IBM tried to kill the clone with the AT based on MCA, but ISA and EISA were so dominant that having micro channel was actually a setback!
It's a limited design because IBM had to cheapen the design to make it price-competitive with 8-bit computers like the Apple II, TRS-80, and all the CP/M machines that were popular at the time. And of course they probably didn't think the design would last so long -- a maximum of 640 KB of RAM was more than anyone would ever need in 1981, but of course by a decade later, things had changed!
vwestlife I am pretty sure they deliberately used a 20 bit address line and the awful hard/soft segmenting system and put the BIOS and Video ram at the top of memory so that it wouldn't become a defacto standard and was meant as a short term solution until a "real PC" could be developed by them.. It's possible that if it weren't for LIM EMS, we would be using much different PCs today. Thanks!
christo930 It is well known that IBM didn't want the PC series to compete with their mainframe systems. And in 1981 when most personal computers had 64K or less, it seemed that no one would ever need the full 1 MB of address space -- especially since actually having that much RAM at the time would've cost thousands of dollars!
vwestlife I think it's a real shame the Amiga didn't catch on in the business world and that CBM didn't aggressively pursue big business. Amiga was so far ahead of it's time but I think the low res monitor and the early form factors (except maybe the 2000) are what kept it out of the business market. If you don't know, you would be surprised at how well an Amiga can stand up to even a Pentium machine (YEARS after the demise of CBM). I think if they would have introduced all Amiga models in the 2000 format, it might have stood a chance especially if they allowed clones. Of course,,Motorola wasn't able to keep the 0x0 going (stooped at the 060), but if they had Intel's volume and income, they might have been able to keep working around the architecture the way Intel and AMD have.
BTW... I really like your channel.
and the best keyboard ever made